Common Issues with NIH Data Sharing Plans and How to Fix Them

It has been a year since the new National Institutes of Health (NIH) Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy took effect, and the Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) has been analyzing submitted plans to see how well they meet the new requirements.

The ODSS analyzed DMS plans submitted to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and identified eight issues and problems that arose with many of the submissions.

The ODSS also suggested steps researchers should take to make existing DMS plans align more closely with the new policy.

Here are the eight common issues that the ODSS identified:

1. Missing details for data that will be generated and shared
2. Sharing only publication-associated data
3. Not sharing data in established data repositories
4. Not using appropriate domain- or discipline-specific data repositories
5. Sharing data only “by request” or with “Principal Investigator (PI) control”
6. Providing vague reasons for not sharing, limited sharing, or delayed sharing
7. Limiting the duration of data sharing to “local retention cycles”
8. Missing or unclear DMS plan budget justifications (in extramural applications)

Check out the DataWorks! Blog post NIH Feedback One Year After Implementation of the DMS Policy for more on common issues with NIH DMS Plan submissions. 

LEARN MORE